


Don't Confess

by becausemagnets



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, dubcon elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-08 08:52:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becausemagnets/pseuds/becausemagnets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles teaches biology and Erik works at the Hellfire Club and they're both very good at lying to themselves and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Confess

Charles Xavier had always been a very good liar, especially if he was lying to himself. 

The kid was wearing the kind of jeans that left enough to the imagination, but were more than mere suggestion. His shirt rode up his back a little bit because of his bag, revealing a line of perfect, lean muscle. He was thin, but the kind of solid, greyhound thin that appealed to Charles as an appreciator of anatomy. He had the glowering teenager thing down pat, but somehow it looked more refined on the angles of his face, all sharp jaw and the hint of high cheekbones underneath a bit of youthful roundness. He sat somewhere around the middle and Charles barely paid attention to anyone or anything else the entire class period. Thankfully, he was good at working on autopilot.  


Lehnsherr, Erik. That was his name, according to the class roster. 

He lipped absently at his pencil and it was almost enough to make Charles stumble through his introductory lecture, where he outlined the noble uses of biology and why his course, though required, would be something of more value than most required biology courses, but Charles was well-practiced at not letting arousal stop the sound of his own voice. It was just the way Lehnsherr did it, running the metal idly against his bottom lip and his eyes, goddamn, his _eyes_. His focus would have been more than flattering if Charles wasn't his teacher, but even with that in mind, he felt like he was under a microscope lens or on a dissection table or being eyefucked within an inch of his life, all of them too pleasant an idea to be comfortable. 

He was the last one to leave the classroom, casting Charles a cursory glance as though he'd caught the current of his thoughts. Charles felt, absurdly, like he was the teenager and Lehnsherr the adult, and because he was not a decent human being by anyone's definition, he liked it. 

He couldn't lie to himself about Erik Lehnsherr. 

– 

Erik Lehnsherr didn't talk much in class. Charles wasn't sure if it was just his class or any class, but he had a theory. He had this whole history of Erik Lehnsherr mocked up in his head, storyboarded and catalogued, all ready to shoot. 

He was pretty far off base. He'd asked Moira about him eventually, about three weeks into the semester, knowing that no one would suspect him of anything untoward (and maybe there was no reason for suspicion—he found Lehnsherr attractive in quite an arbitrary way. He was, when not helped along by too much alcohol, quite a bit more attracted to personality than biology), and she told him quite a lot. Like Charles himself, his father had died when Erik was young (though he'd been older than Charles—Charles, eight, Lehnsherr, twelve—and that brought on its own unique psychological scarring) and Erik's mother wasn't well off financially, but he had some sort of wealthy benefactor paying his tuition. He was an admirable student, but always seemed distracted and though he got good marks, he never seemed to apply himself particularly at all. He didn't talk much in Moira's class either, though he always asked for help with English when he needed it, a native German speaker. She said he was polite, but curt, never wanting to small talk or say anything more than was absolutely necessary to get what he needed. Moira said he didn't talk very much at all. He had no friends and he rode the state bus to and from school, though sometimes a sleek black car with tinted windows picked him up, but very rarely.

Charles tried to come up with some excuse to get him alone, but he always got everything right on his homework and he was never a behavioral problem in class and even though Charles found his oral fixation especially distressing, it likely wasn't professional to keep him after class for that. 

But, it turned out, as it usually does for people with bright blue eyes and great black hearts, he didn't really have to try at all. Lehnsherr came to him.

– 

Also, as it turned out, Lehnsherr was, apparently, pretty good at sex. Or at least, that was his sales pitch. Charles was in his office, with all the blinds closed, because he was hung over, trying to take a nap as no self-respecting student ever took advantage of office hours. Lehnsherr came in, a little out of breath in this way that made him seem his own age, and his jeans were even tighter and he was wearing a turtleneck even though it was only September, but it suited him in a way Charles didn't really want to think about, especially when the first words out of his mouth were, “I think you should know I'm pretty good at sex. If you're interested.” 

And how was anyone supposed to respond to that, really, especially in a professional capacity? 

Charles cleared his throat, looking at the chart detailing blood disorders that he'd hung up in his office because he could find no other practical use for it and definitely not at the way Lehnsherr ran his hand through his hair or the fact that his hand was also shaking. “You should knock next time.” 

“Yes, sir.” And then he stalked towards him with an almost otherworldly grace, a total awareness of his body that was patently unfair on anyone, but particularly on seventeen year olds who were, self-described, pretty good at sex. 

Charles threw his hands up almost involuntarily, feeling as though something had crawled up his throat and jammed there. “Erik—it's not that—I don't think this is a good idea. I don't think you know what you're doing—” Lehnsherr interrupted him with a perfectly foul lip lick, dragging his tongue far too deliberately across his lower lip before smacking his now ridiculously shiny lips together. Okay, so he did know what he was doing. “This isn't happening. I could get you in serious trouble and I'd rather not, so let's just leave it, all right?” 

Lehnsherr stopped _prowling_ , but he shifted, popping one of his hips out, and it didn't really help the overall effect. Charles was curled protectively into himself and his heart was thudding so loudly he was sure Lehnsherr could hear it from where he was standing. And, Charles supposed, he would have to admit he was a little more than arbitrarily attracted to Lehnsherr now, and regions south of his brain were apparently very interested in a great many things untoward. 

“It would be your word against mine, though.” 

Charles squeezed the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. “Erik, please. I don't have time for this. Ever. So please, leave it.”

“Answer me this, at least. You want to, don't you? You want me,” 

There was an earnestness that Charles hadn't expected in his voice and it settled in his chest like lead weight. His voice was hard, more of an accusation than a question, and there was nothing on his face that showed any of the underlying implications, but it all rang through Charles loud and clear and painfully white hot.

“I—yes. Yes. But that's neither here nor there and you should quite obviously forget I've said anything. And get out of my office.” 

His face didn't register anything. He turned on his heel and left.

Charles could feel this coming from a mile away, but it was sort of like a landslide. A seventeen year old landslide with grey-blue eyes and probably a highly realistic view of his own sexual aptitude. 

– 

Lehnsherr was sitting cross-legged in front of his office door. Charles didn't know what else he had expected. “Office hours are for assistance with material related to class. Unless you have some pressing biology matter to discuss, I'm afraid you're going to have to go... elsewhere.”

“Anatomy falls into the spectrum of biology, yes? I have a theory about anatomy that I'd like to discuss with you. And I assure you, it is _very_ pressing.” 

Charles pressed his forehead against his office door and pushed all of the air out of his lungs in one, long exhalation. It would have been funny if it had been happening to anyone else. He simply didn't have the strength of character to deal with things like this. He didn't want Lehnsherr, or at least not the way Lehnsherr wanted him—it seemed almost clinical, very goal-oriented, and Charles had never been very good at living up to anyone's expectations. Lehnsherr seemed to want something affirmed, more than merely the fact that he was desirable enough for Charles to disregard that it was both illegal and a very serious risk to his career prospects, and Charles was more than sure he would never be capable of whatever else Lehnsherr expected.

Charles made a wide sweeping gesture and Lehnsherr brushed passed him. He hovered around Charles's desk, thumbs hooked in the front belt loops of his jeans (the not-too-tight kind this afternoon). The jut of his hipbones was very prominent. “For God's sake, sit down. We'll discuss your _pressing_ anatomy issue like adults.” 

“I'm afraid I'm more of a hands-on learner, Dr. Xavier.” All the same, he sat down, but he kicked his feet up on Charles's desk, his lips twitching up slightly. 

Charles didn't even bother to knock his feet down or reprimand him. He had to pick his battles and he could see he had his hands full. He'd been doing his best to play it all very close to the chest—outrightly refusing Lehnsherr, especially now that he'd made the rather amateur mistake of letting him know that he had a slight interest, had its own ramifications. It was best to bow out gracefully, to fold while he could still retain some dignity and get through the semester with only minor incident, but for some reason, he felt a strange pull to keep playing. Maybe it was the wit. He was always a sucker for blatant, but useful double entendre. And there was definitely a reason Lehnsherr was doing this. As far as Charles could tell, Moira was right; he had no friends to speak of. He, in fact, seemed to actively dislike everyone he came in contact with and used his precocious sexuality as more of defense mechanism than a weapon. It kept anyone from getting too close—and now he was trying to use it to pull Charles in. And in a sick twist of fate, it was working. Though probably not the way Lehnsherr had intended.

“I was certain you'd say that, but it's not exactly my area of expertise. I'm rather more familiar with the internals of anatomy than the externals, I'm afraid.” 

This seemed to stump Lehnsherr temporarily. He furrowed his brow and ran his teeth over his bottom lip, a nervous tick that seemed so out of place given his usual total body awareness. 

“Look, Erik, I'm certainly flattered by your interest, but I'm not going to take you up on your offer. I'm not going to say you can't come to my office because I've nothing better to do, but we're not doing this every afternoon. So, if you'd like, we can find a more constructive use of our time, or you can leave.” 

“What do you suggest?” 

Going home and leaving me the fuck alone was his first thought, but he amended. “Do you play chess?” 

Lehnsherr didn't, but he picked up on the basics pretty quickly and he was astute enough to see through some of the more advanced moves Charles tried to sneak passed him. He didn't speak much, only asking for clarification occasionally, and he left after about an hour and a half, throwing his bag over his shoulder. Charles felt oddly used when he left and wondered if he would have felt the same if he'd had Lehnsherr bent over his desk. 

–

One of the dancers at the Hellfire Club looked exactly like Erik Lehnsherr. 

Which would have been fine, except that Charles was a frequent patron of the Hellfire Club and he knew all about the dancers. They weren't _only_ dancers. For a nominal fee, they could be just about anything. And it would be hard to ignore what that meant when Lehnsherr was sitting across from him in his office, silent, with his strangely piercing grey-blue eyes, and his massive defense mechanisms that Charles hadn't the heart to break down. Because it meant he was seventeen years old, wearing shorts that might as well have been painted on, in a cage, having money thrown at him, and he probably would get fucked by a man three times his age in the backseat of a car before the sun came up.

Of course, there was a slim possibility that the dancer wasn't Erik Lehnsherr, but the tug in Charles's chest made it clear that possibility was very, very slim. He couldn't see the dancer's face, but he could see enough of everything else, the light playing off of his lean body, all smooth muscle, but too young to be truly defined. He was definitely more than arbitrarily good looking and he was getting the attention he deserved, the floor completely littered with dollar bills, his hips pressed up against the bars of the cage. It should have been obscene— _would_ have been obscene—were it anyone else, but his preternatural grace extended even to cage dancing. He looked more predator than prey, all of his movements perfectly succinct and controlled, minimal but effective. 

Charles started drinking and didn't stop, doing his best to ignore the dancer, but as the night wore on, it got harder and harder not to watch. Lehnsherr got out of the cage after about three hours and started dancing on the bar with a blond who also looked far too young to fuck, but was probably closer to legal than Lehnsherr. Charles tried to look away, but Lehnsherr's body had its own gravitational pull, sweat turning his skin nearly gold, his hair dark and sticking to him—contrasting so sharply with his eyes it made Charles suck in a breath. His rocked his hips against the other dancer's, practically molding himself around him like another skin, his movements perfectly tailored, synchronized, rehearsed without looking it. It wasn't erotic in the slightest and that was the thing that probably weighed on Charles the most, the startlingly methodological way he went about it all. Sex should not be a reflex when you were only seventeen years old. 

He called in sick when he got in that morning. 

– 

But he still went to the Hellfire as soon as the sun went down. Lehnsherr wasn't in the cage, which was good as Raven had insisted they spend some quality brother-sister time together and the only thing they really liked doing much anymore was getting drunk and ignoring the fact that one or both of them usually left with one of the scantily clad entertainers on their arm. Raven wasn't twenty one, but having Xavier associated with your own name meant you could be whatever age got you where you were going. It also helped that Sebastian Shaw had financed every major development in Brian Xavier's career and that Charles's exploits were frequently featured in the papers, giving the Hellfire notoriety it might not otherwise have possessed as it only catered to a very specific clientele. A clientele that typically wanted to see seventeen year olds dance in cages and then push him to his knees in a bathroom stall. 

Raven was already pleasantly buzzed before they even got to the Hellfire, her weight a slight pressure at his side as he steered them through the door. Apparently, Charles's not-quite-but-close-enough alcoholism had rubbed off on her, another unneeded assurance that he should be nowhere near the impressionable youth of Westchester. 

He almost made it out of there without seeing Lehnsherr. He physically ran into him on the dance floor at about three in the morning. He was wearing the same skin-tight black shorts that barely hit his thighs, his arms wrapped around an older gentlemen who was a solid five inches shorter than him. The man's fingers were practically stark white against the fabric of Lehnsherr's shorts, his hands full of Lehnsherr's ass. Charles's felt absurdly like slapping the man's hands away, but there was something close to fear in Lehnsherr's eyes, a strange tangle of pure terror and lust that kind of floored Charles (he was admittedly more than a little drunk). Charles half expected Lehnsherr to let go of the man, but there was a lot of money shoved in the waistband of his shorts. Charles moved away, but he felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room, the bass beat at a distance as though he'd been plunged underwater. 

Lehnsherr came and found him, pulling all of the money out of his shorts. Charles tried not to dwell on the light trail of hair leading down into those shorts. Lehnsherr leaned against the bar, his bare shoulder pressed against Charles's clothed one. “I saw you here last night.” 

He sounded so much older than he was and it made Charles feel sick, all of the alcohol rushing to his head at once. “I suppose I should stop coming here now.” Charles hadn't exactly meant to say that out loud, but he didn't regret it, squeezing the bridge of his nose. Lehnsherr leaned over the bar and poured him a beer straight from the tap. It seemed in bad form not to drink it.

“You don't have to stop coming here. Unless you're going to compensate me well for my time, I'm going to pretty much ignore you if I see you here.” Lehnsherr leaned against the bar and he should have by all rights looked patently ridiculous, wearing no clothes, glitter splattered on his eyelids and smudged eyeliner underneath his eyes, his hair rucked and sticking to him. But he didn't. He looked better than Charles ever could, his waist so narrow and his legs so long. Charles knew he was staring, but he couldn't help it. Everything was sliding together, as if magnetized around Lehnsherr, shrinking and bending and expanding with him. Lehnsherr had a small, satisfied smile on his face, but none of the quiet amusement reached his eyes. They reflected the changing, ridiculous disco lights above them, flashing purple, green, orange, blue, red. Charles wished he didn't know what it felt like to be that young and that dead inside. 

“Question.” Charles had the urge to reach out and touch Lehnsherr's shoulder, feel him under his fingers. He had this idea that Lehnsherr hadn't been touched— _really_ touched—in his entire life. Well, in the five fatherless years, at least. But Charles was drunk and he'd spent a great deal of his own fatherless life using touch as a gateway drug and he knew it wasn't a good idea. But neither was this question. “Why were you coming on to me so hard? What do you expect to get out of me fucking you?” 

Lehnsherr didn't bat an eyelash. He shifted his hips, leaning closer to Charles, his shoulders hunching together, making his collarbone stand out stark against his skin. He turned his face upward, although he didn't have to as he and Charles were practically the same height, but then he drew attention to his neck and his utterly perfect jawline, archaic and somehow not out of place with the club lights playing against it, his hair practically bronze, the glitter on his eyelids giving him an unfair ethereal quality. “Even if you were fucking me, and I mean _really_ fucking me, hands on my hips, skin slapping skin, coming on my face, even if you did all of that, I still somehow feel like I'd be the one fucking you. And at this particular time in my life, that's something that I want.” 

Charles didn't exactly know how to respond to that, so he handed Lehnsherr his empty glass and Lehnsherr, obliging, leaned over the bar and filled it back up for him, taking a drink of his own before sliding it across the bar to Charles. “You don't have to take it as an affront, Dr. Xavier. I wasn't trying to offend you. Knowing what I do professionally, I'd probably take that as a compliment.” 

“But what if I wanted to fuck you? What if I wanted to smash your face into the mattress, choke you until you were breathing my name, make you come without touching you? What if that's what I _wanted_?” Charles absently licked a line of beer foaming over the top. Lehnsherr's eyes widened and he looked closer to his age. 

“But you—don't.” 

“You're right, I don't, but you should be more careful, Mr. Lehnsherr. Especially considering what you do professionally.” Charles allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction before he turned to leave. Lehnsherr seemed somehow diminished, the glitter on his face shining almost sickly against the sweat, a deep furrow between his eyebrows. He left Lehnsherr a hundred dollar bill. 

The bill was in a tightly sealed envelope in his mailbox at work the next morning. Without a note. 

– 

Charles escaped a few weeks without sexual advances, but they'd reached a stalemate and Charles knew— _knew_ —it was only a matter of time before one of them reached a tipping point as Lehnsherr hadn't stopped coming to his office every single day after class to play a few games of chess and Charles hadn't stopped going to the Hellfire to get drunk and estimate the age of the man Lehnsherr left with that night. 

“What if—” Lehnsherr licked salt off the back of his hand and tipped back a shot like an expert before sliding a lime between his lips and talking around it. “What if I asked you to take me back to your place and not do anything with me? Just let me sleep on your couch.” 

“Why would you ask me that, though?” Charles watched him take another shot, trying to ignore the way his own mouth was going dry, his tongue sticking to the roof as he watched Lehnsherr's Adam's apple bob and up and then down, a long, deliberate swallow. “That seems wholly out of character. If I was the kind of person that did things like that out of the generosity of my heart, hypothetically speaking, what's to stop you from crawling into my bed, anyway? You haven't proven yourself to be very trustworthy in that respect.” 

“But you gave me that money, that first night.” Lehnsherr tossed back another shot, but he jammed the lime in Charles's mouth, his eyes bright and shining with something Charles couldn't qualify. Not happiness, though it seemed as fleeting. Something scarier, something much more dangerous. 

“And what did you think that meant?” 

Charles had never seen Lehnsherr drink more than a sip of alcohol in their twenty night stalemate at the Hellfire. He didn't really want to think about the implications, but his brain was running fast that night, trying to find some footing. Lehnsherr seemed so _organized_ —every facet of his life had its place, all of his emotions carefully regimented and contained, never spilling over for a second—but he cracked around Charles. Not a lot, but enough to show that it wasn't working. His carefully organized life wasn't enough to contain him anymore. 

“I thought it meant you were the kind of person, who, I don't know, wanted to try to get me out of this or whatever. Use your enormous wealth to raise me up and keep me off the mean streets.” Lehnsherr smiled sloppily, too many teeth and not enough sentiment, and Charles felt absurdly like leaving or holding fast to him and promising he'd never let go. It wasn't what Lehnsherr thought. It was what Lehnsherr _wanted_. 

Which, of course, was a terrible thing to ask of a less than admirable person. 

Lehnsherr's lips tasted like saltwater and cheap tequila and his hitched breath was shallow, almost delicate inside Charles's mouth. Lehnsherr's hand sputtered on Charles's chest, grabbing a handful of his pressed and buttoned shirt, but his hands were shaking and cold, even through the cotton. Charles let his fingers ghost over Lehnsherr's hipbones, feather light and never truly sinking in, and they stayed like that for awhile, tasting and testing and scared of each other. 

Lehnsherr slept on the couch. 

– 

To his credit, he didn't attempt to seduce Charles at any point. He did, however, refuse to put on a shirt as Charles made him breakfast. “If you don't mind me asking, how did you get mixed up with Shaw and the Hellfire?” Charles scooped the eggs onto Lehnsherr's plate. Lehnsherr broke the yokes immediately. 

“I mind you asking.” It was polite, but forceful, obviously meant to deter Charles from pressing. 

Charles sat down across from Lehnsherr at the counter that served as a table (the dining room was too dusty, unused since his parents' deaths) and ate his own eggs, watching Lehnsherr move his food around on his plate. “I'm not trying to be intrusive, but you seemed, um, last night, you seemed to want some, I don't know, help, and I'd like to help you, but I think I'd have to know what's going on first.” 

“I don't need your help.” Lehnsherr poured himself some orange juice, his shoulders slumped forward, drawing himself ever inward, making himself a small target. 

“No, you don't,” Charles agreed, screwing the cap back on before Lehnsherr could do it, brushing his fingers over Lehnsherr's lightly, but he jerked his hand back as though Charles's hand were electrically charged. “I didn't say you did. It's quite obvious you don't. But you _want_ it. And I suspect no one has ever helped you without asking for something in return. But there's a first time for everything.” 

“But you'll want something in return. No one does a favor without expecting that it'll be returned some day.” Lehnsherr took a couple of bites before pushing his plate away, fork clattering against the porcelain. “You're right. I do want your help. But not without a square deal. I don't want—I don't want to feel like I _owe_ you anything, I don't want anything you give me hanging over my head. I've had enough of that.” Charles tried to interrupt, but Lehnsherr's eyes flashed like steel as soon as he opened his mouth, so he chewed on his breakfast and listened, knowing better than to argue when he wouldn't be heard. “So you can help me, do whatever you think is best, if that means you'll also fuck me.” 

“That's not a square deal. Your end of the deal is illegal. And besides, how is me fucking you helping you? Isn't the problem that you've let—that men my age and significantly older have been taking advantage of you for God knows how long? You—you've got a warped view of how the world works, Lehnsherr, and I'm not getting tangled up in this.” 

Lehnsherr laughed lightly, disconcertingly, his eyes still bright and metallic, but now almost like glass, catching and reflecting all of the light in an almost sick gleam. “I see the world for how it truly is, Dr. Xavier, not what I wish it could be.” 

It went without saying that Charles was already tangled up in this. 

Charles didn't argue, taking a long drink out of Lehnsherr's orange juice. “Finish your eggs and I'll drive you to school.” 

Lehnsherr, for once, did as he was told. 

– 

“You're really starting to be bad for business. If you don't fuck me soon, we might have to figure out some kind of arrangement.” 

Charles was, regrettably, drunk. He'd been fairly good about it since Lehnsherr had become his housemate, only drinking to match Lehnsherr, but he'd gotten started early as Raven had asked him about Lehnsherr. Well, not in so many words, but she had seen them leave that morning and she had made some assumptions, namely that Charles was fucking him in the sort of underhanded arrangement that came with having great deals of money one didn't earn and that he went to Westchester Prep. She hadn't made the leap that he may be underage and also one of Charles's students, but that was only a matter of time. Charles had downplayed the whole situation by noting the Lehnsherr sized indents in the couch and also that it was probably in good form, as an educator, to keep male prostitutes on his couch instead of letting lecherous men use them for money, but Raven didn't seem particularly convinced and neither was Charles, to be perfectly honest. 

Because he had watched Lehnsherr sleep. Sat on the coffee table in only his boxer briefs and watched the rise and fall of his chest, the way his eyelashes splayed on his cheeks, the way his lips turned down as the night went on. And that was never a good sign, not in the long run. 

“Even if I fucked you, I think I'd be bad for business.” Lehnsherr's smile faltered for a beat. “I don't think this is going to end how you'd like it to end, Erik. Even if we do end up falling into bed, I don't imagine it'll be very... liberating for either one of us.”

“Who said anything about liberation?” Lehnsherr leaned in, his skin cold though he was covered in a layer of sweat and glitter, his hair smelling like alcohol and someone else's cheap cologne. He pressed a chaste kiss to Charles's cheek, leaving a glittery smear. “Maybe I want some new chains.” 

Lehnsherr danced with three men at once, if it could be called that, and he always turned his eyes in Charles's direction, and Charles thought, maybe, he knew what Lehnsherr meant. 

– 

Charles hadn't thought—not really—that it had escaped notice that Lehnsherr had been coming home with him for the better part of two weeks (there was one night where Charles couldn't find him at close, so he went home and Lehnsherr turned up on his doorstep two hours later, soaked to his skin from the rain, wearing someone else's leather jacket, flashing a wad of bills at Charles with a grin that looked like he was asking for his teeth to be kicked in), but he hadn't thought that Sebastian Shaw would want to see him personally. 

He was over in a private booth, Emma Frost on his arm. Charles knew Emma pretty well, both of their families built on old money and bad blood, but she had made a name for herself in ways that Charles hadn't— _wouldn't_. Fucking Sebastian Shaw was about as close to signing over your soul as one was likely to get at this point. She did look good, though, better than she had the last time he'd seen her, buried deep in the kind of drug problem only old money could buy. 

“Charlie.” Shaw beckoned for Charles to sit. Charles cast a cursory glance at the bodyguard in front of the velvet rope separating Shaw from the rest of the club, a sword strapped to his back and a ghastly and angrily red scar underneath his eye, before he took a seat, as far away from Shaw as was polite, but Shaw slid down the leather until he could prop her arm against the back, a gesture of good intention that only read threat. Emma drank her martini primly and pretended as though she'd never seen Charles in her life, which, all things considered, was probably for the best. 

“Mr. Shaw.” Charles took one of the drinks off of the table and scoped the crowd for Lehnsherr. He was nowhere to be found, not even in one of the cages. 

“How are you enjoying Erik, then?” Shaw's smile had too many teeth. Charles didn't like dealing with men like Shaw, but Shaw, like every lecherous new money man with an overinflated ego and bad intentions, took that to mean that he didn't know how. Charles was excellent at dealing with men like Shaw, had, in fact, done nothing but deal with men like Shaw. Had effectively been raised by a man like Shaw and watched him die with only the slightest pang of feeling. And that was more for his mother than for Marko, anyway. 

“I don't know what you've heard, but I'm actually Erik's _teacher_. I'm giving him a place to stay, if he wants, nothing more.” 

Shaw's grin turned perfectly villainous, clownishly wide and garish, the kind of smile that would keep braver men than Charles up at night. “And that kiss you shared at the bar? What were you _teaching_ him, them, Xavier?” 

“I understand he's a—commodity. I'm not trying to step on any toes, but I'm going to let him stay at my place if he wants to. You can threaten me with whatever you want, Mr. Shaw, but it's perfectly within in the law for a student to sleep on his teacher's couch, especially when his employer is peddling him out in an underage prostitution ring.” 

Shaw's pupils drew in for a second, as though Charles had been emitting light as he spoke, but they blew back bigger and blacker than before and he tilted his head back to laugh, moving his arm, his fingers heavy like lead on Charles's shoulder. “Charlie, my boy. You think I wanted you to give up the little charade? You're wrong.” Shaw leaned forward, his breath hot and uncomfortable in the shell of Charles's ear, sending the worst kind of shivers down his spine. “I want you to fuck him. Fuck him like he's never been fucked. Make him come crawling back for more. Make him think that he's finally found his golden ticket. And then remind him who got him this far. Who made him the _man_ he is. Break his little heart. And he'll come back to me. He'll always come back to me.” 

Charles stood up immediately, spilling most of his drink of his pants. He grabbed desperately at the napkin on the table and tried to catch Emma's eyes, but she wouldn't look at him. Shaw's smile was soft and sickening and satisfied and Charles wanted to throw up. “It is really noble, what you're trying to do, Charlie boy. I know you want to be a good teacher. Go that extra mile. But we both know who you are. And who he is. And who _I_ am.” 

“You're wrong. You don't know a thing about him. Not anymore.” 

Shaw didn't even have the decency to laugh, his smile gnawing and plastered on, patient, indulgent. “Oh, you've changed him that much in, what, a month? What do you know about him, _Doctor_ Xavier? Do you know anything about his mother? Where he lives? Why he doesn't like to go home at night? How many men he's fucked? What kind of name he's made for himself?” 

Charles swallowed around the lump in his throat. “It doesn't matter. None of that matters.” 

“Hmm. Like the fact that you live in a mansion older than half of the state of New York doesn't matter to him. Don't worry, Charlie, your secret is safe with me.” 

Charles left, shouldering passed the bodyguard, afraid for a second that Shaw would tell the man to restrain him, but he didn't. Charles left the Hellfire without Lehnsherr. He showed up shortly after three in the morning with a cut under his cheek and a wad of bills in the back pocket of his jeans. Charles wanted to smash him against the door, throttle him or hold him or cry on him or beg him to never, ever, ever go back to the Hellfire, but he didn't do any of that. He stared at him for awhile before Lehnsherr took a step forward, his hair hanging around his eyes, so dark compared to his eyes, and hooked his hand in the open collar of Charles's baggy cardigan, a fraction of a smile on his lips. 

Charles didn't tell him anything about Shaw. They slept in the same bed that night, Lehnsherr's weight warm and comforting, even though he smelled like strangers and sweat and expensive alcohol, his skin impossibly smooth when it brushed against Charles in his sleep. When they woke up, Lehnsherr's own hair standing up and his eyes bleary, he finger combed Charles's bedhead for him, slowly, as if afraid that it would actually hurt him. He turned away before he got out of bed and said to the wall, “You know, for all the people I've slept with, I've never actually _slept_ with someone.” 

Charles didn't know what to say to that, so he pulled him back down. 

– 

It probably would have been better if he'd just fucked him when he asked the first time. 

Or the second time. 

Or the third time.

Or every single fucking time he'd asked.

–

Because, at a certain point, Lehnsherr stopped asking. There were still the chess matches, more sexually charged than Charles would like, and Lehnsherr had gone gone back to his nervous pencil fellatio in the classroom, but even in the dead of night when they were both caught between asleep and awake, sharing body heat if not actually touching, Lehnsherr never asked and that was more dangerous. He mostly stopped cracking jokes about it, too. 

They'd fallen into a sort of warped domesticity that they never addressed, Lehnsherr always coming home fucked out and exhausted but not too tired to share tea with Charles and whatever else might be on his mind. Charles was mostly inclined to let him talk as it seemed he spoke so rarely—even if he was talking about something as pointless as the relative merits of enjoying reality television for its sadistic undertones—because Charles doubted very much that he was ever allowed to simply talk since he was a much younger child. He was more than pragmatic, he had almost all of the whimsy beaten out of him, and Charles knew that something in him had sparked a return, if only in part, to days when Lehnsherr had been allowed to say whatever was on in his mind. And maybe one day, whatever was in his heart. 

But they never talked about sex. Which, a month and a half ago, would have been exactly what Charles wanted, but Shaw's threat loomed over him like a loudly ticking clock of _expectation_ and he knew that he needed Lehnsherr—Erik—to talk about it. Not to try to initiate it and not to avoid mentioning it at all costs like he was doing now, pretending that sleeping in the same bed with someone for weeks meant nothing sexual at all, but to really _talk_ about it. 

He had no fucking clue how to do that. He just knew he'd made a wrong turn somewhere and he had to get them back on course. 

There had always been a lot more at stake for Erik than for Charles. It had taken him that long to realize it. 

– 

Charles knew it was a bad idea to go back to the Hellfire, but he was loathe to deny Raven anything, the gulf between them growing wider every day. She'd stopped asking about Erik, but she was smug, as though she knew something Charles didn't. He danced with her for a few songs, drink in hand, and pretended not to notice Shaw circling the dance floor like an oversized bat, catching Charles's eye at every opportunity. Charles tried to beg off, but Raven grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pulled him in, a sinister gleam in her eye. “No, Charles. We're going to talk about this.” 

“Talk about what?” Charles pried one of her hands off, taking a step back, sloshing his drink over the sides of the plastic cup. 

“Your boy over there.” She gestured to Lehnsherr, dancing in one of the cages near the end of the dance floor, a healthy crowd around him. His eyes looked dead. “And his handler.” She slid her eyes over to Shaw, looming near the bar. He tipped his glass to them, flashing teeth. “Are you going to tell me what's going on or am I going to have to beat it out of you?” She didn't fall out of step at all, dancing as though nothing was happening while Charles felt stuck in time, as though he were sinking into cement, the world spinning faster than ever around him. 

“There's—nothing. Nothing is going on. You've got the wrong idea. And so has Shaw, for that matter.” Charles tried to shove passed her, but Raven proved herself an immovable object, forcing all of her weight against him. 

“ _Charles_.” It was half-snarl, half-plead, and it was an arrow straight to Charles's heart. 

“I'm not lying, Raven. I'm not—He's been staying over, but not the way... Do you think it's better that he's with me or with Shaw?” 

Raven paused, her hand stiff on Charles's shoulder. “I don't think—can't you let it go?” 

Charles laughed lightly, scrubbing a hand through his hair. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the flashing lights of the club and Shaw's teeth. “I'm afraid not.” 

Raven smiled at him, fragile and sympathetic, so like the Raven he used to know—the Raven who used to confide in him in the safety of pillow forts and climb up to the highest tree limb to scream that she loved him and fall asleep in his lap as he read to her. Charles stepped passed her and she let him go, the weight of her hand lingering as he made his way to the bar. 

He wasn't going to confront Shaw, but he knew it was pointless to try to avoid him all night. He patted Charles on the shoulder and Charles threw up in his mouth. “Have you fucked him yet, then?” Charles tilted his head up, elbows on the bar, and Shaw laughed lightly at him, the sound echoing in Charles's head even as it got swallowed up by the pounding bass. “Still think you're being noble, hmm? Do you think he is? I know you think that by reaching out you're saving him from himself, but don't you think he picked you, _Doctor_ Xavier? Everyone knows who your father was and all my little Erik's ever seen in anyone is a couple of zeros. There are a lot of zeros after your name, aren't there, Charlie?” 

Charles didn't rise to the bait. Partly because he didn't believe it. “Your sister, does she know that you've got a little kept man? What are her thoughts on the subject?” Shaw laughed loudly, cold and hard, turning a few heads around the bar. He put his arm around Charles, steering him away from the bar. “How about we give her a little show, hmm?” 

It took too long for Charles to realize what was about to happen. Shaw beckoned to one of his lackeys, a Hispanic man in a perfectly tailored suit. He glanced appraisingly at Charles, listening to Shaw's instructions carefully. He went straight for Erik's cage. Charles tried to move away from Shaw, but his arm across Charles's shoulders was like an iron bar. He dug his elbow into Shaw's ribs, pushing, but Shaw just laughed, tugging him in against his body, closer, tighter. 

Erik looked as terrified as Charles felt, moving like a puppet, arms tight and stiff at his sides. His eyes were bright, though, curling blue flames, and Charles did his best to look reassuring, feeling as though he were tied to the chair Shaw had shoved him in. Erik straddled Charles's legs confidently, almost defiantly, but he was looking anywhere but in Charles's eyes and when he touched Charles's shoulders, just pressing his palms in, they were shaking. He leaned over to speak directly in Charles's ear, to be heard and not overheard. “Let him think he's won. Please, Charles.” 

He'd never called Charles by his first name. 

He was, unfortunately, so good at lap dancing that he could even perform under duress. Charles's didn't touch him, though, knuckles turning white on the edge of his chair. He knew that they were attracting attention and he could feel Raven's eyes even if he couldn't see her, his own eyes locked on Erik. Erik slid a hand down his body, stopping just before the waistband of his ridiculous shorts, leaning back against Charles's legs, hips shoved up. He smirked, but Charles knew it wasn't for him—it was over his head and straight at Shaw. His hips snapped forward, back, forward, back, and he finally steadied himself on Charles's shoulders, firmly, hands no longer shaking, a rehearsed confidence. He pressed himself tight against Charles before leaning all the way back, holding himself up with only his legs, wrapped around Charles's waist and the back of the chair, ,palms flat on the floor, his whole body on display. But not for Charles. Nothing that Erik was doing for him, and that made it so much worse that it was still distressingly arousing. He was still wearing his old chains. 

– 

Erik was a hand grenade—Charles was too afraid to say or do anything, lest he pull the pin. Erik had crawled into Charles's bed, not even bothering to shower, glitter and sweat stuck all over him, rubbing off on Charles's white sheets. Charles pulled his t-shirt off over his head and stepped towards the bed, moving towards Erik before laying down next to him, on top of the covers. Erik made a noise somewhere between a huff and a laugh and gestured for him to come under. 

“I'm scared.” It's not exactly what Charles meant to say, but he supposed it was true enough. 

Erik turned under the covers, pressing himself up against Charles's body, stiff, but warm. “Of what? Shaw?” 

Charles shook his head, breathing around the rise and fall of Erik's chest against his own. “No, I—he doesn't scare me. I'm just scared of the kind of people you've built your life around, you know? If that's—if this is your life and I'm—if I'm your last hope, then you're... lost.” 

Erik laughed, smoothing Charles's hair down almost absently, his hand sticky against Charles's damp hair. He brushed it back, away from his forehead, lightly scratching his scalp with his fingernails. “I haven't built my life around anything but the money. And I'm not—I've always known what they were, Charles. And I've always known what it would take to get out. It's going to take more than you.” 

“I'm scared of you most of all.” Charles pressed his nose against Erik's, breathing shallowly, eyes open so he could see Erik's eyelashes, long and light, brushing his cheeks when he closed his eyes. 

“What have you got to be afraid of?” Erik wasn't laughing, though, eyes bright and locked with Charles. It almost wasn't a question, but an answer to one Charles hadn't known he was asking, a confirmation. 

Charles didn't answer him. He leaned forward and kissed him, lightly, chastely, but it didn't take long before Erik's tongue was tangled with his and he'd rolled Erik flat on his back, tasting every corner of his mouth. Erik's hands were crawling down his back, all nails, digging in right beneath the waistband of his pants, sharp enough to make Charles's hips jump forward, pushing almost all of the air out of both of them, but they didn't stop, panting, out of breath, locked together. Erik bit his bottom lip, dragging it back to him with his teeth, only letting go when Charles moaned, moving so he could slot their legs together, pressing them groin-to-groin. 

It felt sort of organic, not that they fell into bed together, but that they had grown around each other like vines all those nights spent awake side-by-side. Erik wrapped his legs around Charles's waist, digging his heels in so he could lift his hips up off the mattress and pull off his boxer shorts, reaching between them to unbuckle Charles's belt, pulling it slowly through the loops of his pants. He kissed every inch of Charles's face while he pushed his pants down, from the crown of his head to the dip in his chin, letting Charles kick his own pants off. Charles felt like reassuring him, telling him he didn't have to, that they could keep going on like before, but he knew that Erik had heard the first bit before and that the second bit was a lie—Sebastian Shaw had seen to that. They most certainly could not keeping going on like before. 

Erik turned around and Charles couldn't argue, one hand on his shoulder and the other on the bed frame. Erik pushed back against him insistently, but Charles felt like there was something growing in his chest, obstructing his breathing and all of his rationality, and even though he was hard, he couldn't get rid of the way Erik looked when he slept, his own age and unafraid and free and everything he could be if men like Shaw—men like Charles—hadn't tried to make him something he wasn't, something he shouldn't be. But his voice was high and pleading and broken and Charles kissed every single dip in his spine and though he wasn't one to jump in without much foreplay, he did what Erik wanted. Exactly what Erik wanted. 

He pressed himself flat against Erik's back, holding onto the bed frame to keep most of his weight in his arms and legs and off of Erik, his knees screaming as he kept pushing forward, his eyes closed as he rested his face against the curve of Erik's neck. He could feel how tense Erik's shoulders were, how much his entire body was protesting at Charles's closeness, but Charles stayed there until he felt Erik relax a little under his touch, the friction of their skin rubbing together with every slight movement another dimension of sensory overload. 

Erik came screaming Charles's name like he'd waited to do it his entire life, his voice breaking in the middle, as though he'd surprised himself. Charles came licking a line between Erik's drawn together shoulders. He rolled over in Charles's arms and kissed him properly, rolling tongue and hitched breath, making more noise than he had the whole time Charles had fucked him. He smoothed Charles's hair against his scalp and laughed at him lightly, his eyes somehow content and sad all at the same time. Like he saw something Charles couldn't see. 

“I don't want you to go back.” Charles squeezed Erik involuntarily, pressing them nose to nose, Erik's breath cool and shallow against his cheeks. 

“I know.” 

– 

He pulled his shirt over his head as soon as the office door latched with an audible click. “Lock it, for God's sake.” He knocked the chess set off of the table in front of the couch, kicking it aside when he straddled Charles's thighs, undoing Charles's tie. “We don't have to do this all the time now, you know. I'm not going to—stop just because I expect you to have sex with me.” Erik pulled Charles's face up to his with his tie, still tucked under the collar of his shirt, and kissed the argument away. 

His hands were shaking on Erik's waist and it felt like the exact opposite of the first time, a wild, tangled fear caught in his throat as Erik rolled his hips, the couch creaking underneath them, threatening to fold in the middle. It wasn't just that Erik was good at it—it was that he didn't want to be. He wanted to be something else for Charles, something purer and therefore more illicit, something memorable because it was innocent and shocked with every new touch and every new feeling and every little sound Charles made, but he couldn't be, he couldn't even pretend to be, so he settled for being half. He threw his head back, practically growling, showing a long line of neck, and he guided Charles's hands up to his chest, raking his own nails down his chest, shoving himself down on Charles harder and faster, the back of the couch hitting the wall, solidly, over and over again. 

Charles reached for him, his own orgasm building like wildfire in the base of his stomach, but Erik grabbed his wrist, pinned it to the cushion, and came untouched, whispering Charles's name into his mouth, sucking and biting at his lips until Charles's came, too, leaving nail marks at Erik's waist, like he had been trying to hold Erik in place.

Charles decided he was going to stop teaching at the end of the year. 

– 

Charles met Erik's mother at Parent-Teacher conferences. Erik had been sending Charles dirty texts the entire night which he had not responded to on principle, but he knew his face would get warm every time his phone vibrated in his breast pocket and he had to admit the idea of Erik waiting up at his house, in a state of undress, was distracting. Most of the parents that actually came to Parent-Teacher conferences were the kind of parents that Charles would never understand—either their children were doing perfectly in the class and the visit was to actually assess Charles's worth, because clearly a private school that charged more for tuition than most community colleges couldn't assess its own teachers to the satisfaction of a Westchester housewife, or their children were failing and they were too used to people kissing the money coming out their asses to think that someone could possibly be failing their child. 

So he was more than shocked to see Erik's mother, not only because her son had been staying at his house for nearly the entire semester so far and he'd started fucking Charles senseless whenever they were alone in a room together, but because she fit into neither one of those categories, smiling at him almost shyly, reaching across the desk in his office to shake his hand. He tried not to remember her son riding him on the couch not three days ago. Her eyes were the same crystalline blue as Erik's, enigmatic not only because they changed color, but because they changed _texture_ depending on what he was feeling. She looked tired, her hair slightly darker than Erik's coppery-brown, without a hint of grey. Charles wondered what she thought about her son never coming home. 

“Dr. Xavier, it's nice to finally meet you. Erik talks about you a lot, you know.” 

Charles swallowed around a sudden constriction in his throat, like it had collapsed in on itself. “Oh, does he? That's... surprising.” 

She laughed, but it was a true laugh—the kind that came from your heart like it had always been there, waiting to bubble up. Every time Erik laughed, it was as though Charles had shaken it out of him and it sounded hiccupy, breathy, jerked, hesitant, as though he had given up hope that he would ever have a reason to laugh again. “It shouldn't be. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, Dr. Xavier, but most teachers don't spend every single afternoon playing chess with their pupils.” 

“They should, though. I'm not—Erik is really remarkable, I like spending time with him.” 

She grabbed his hand and Charles jumped, but he didn't move his hand away. He let her close her fingers around his, squeezing harder than he expected. She made desperate eye contact with him and Charles knew she was as scared for Erik— _of_ Erik—as he was. “Dr. Xavier, please, for my sake, keep him safe, won't you? Keep him out of there, please.” 

His mouth went dry. A small part of him knew that there was no way a mother couldn't notice when her son was in over his head, but he had hoped that she didn't know. He would never wish that on anyone. Charles averted his eyes and tried to draw his hand away, but Erik's mother tightened her grip, pulling his hand closer to her, leaning forward, eyes bright and flashing. “You love him, don't you?” 

“I—no. I care about him a lot, but I'll never love him. He doesn't want me to.” 

“He loves you, though. You must know that.” Charles shrugged. He couldn't look at her. “Dr. Xavier, I know you think you're doing him a favor by easing him into it, but you need to make him choose. He'll choose you, I promise.” 

Charles wished he was naïve enough to believe that. 

– 

Erik laid his arms across the back of the couch, lifting his hips up so Charles could pull his pajama bottoms back up. Erik's homework was spread out on the coffee table in front of them, all of his textbooks in a nice stack. It was fair to say he'd moved in, though he disappeared sometimes, coming back with the sun and pockets full of cough drops, keycards to hotels in the city, and rolls of bills. He smoked, but always on the balcony, feet up on the bannister. Charles offered him one of the many empty bedrooms, but Erik claimed he couldn't fall asleep without Charles there, so they slept in Charles's childhood bedroom, in the full size bed Charles had slept in since before he was Erik's age, and sometimes Erik would jerk awake in the dead of night and grab at Charles like he was afraid of being pulled down in deep water. 

At Westchester, they rarely spoke to each other. Erik sat in the back and he never raised his hand and Charles never called on him. He did as well as ever and he never asked Charles about biology—it almost seemed like they both preferred to act as though that forty-five minute block of their day, five days a week, didn't exist, that all that existed between them existed when they were together in the late Brian Xavier's estate. 

Charles looked at Erik's records and he knew where his mother lived—in the city, not one of the terrible parts, but not one of the good parts either, caught between true poverty and just-hard-luck. Charles also knew that the circumstances of Erik's father's death had been violent, that Erik had been there, and he knew it as all tied up in the Hellfire. Erik had spent some time in foster care before being returned to his mother. Apparently, at some point in his early academic career, he'd refused to speak English. 

Charles wished Erik talked about anything, not only because he was probably the most interesting person he'd ever met, but because some part of him understood that if Erik really did want out of the Hellfire, he had to admit to himself how it had gotten that way, what choices he'd made to end up in Sebastian Shaw's cage. 

Erik leaned up, elbows against the arm rest, and kissed Charles, tasting like Charles's toothpaste, smelling like Charles's shampoo and laundry detergent. “Why do you only live in three rooms of this house?” Erik asked his cheeks, laying back against the couch, hair darker at the root and hanging around his eyes. 

“Too big for two of us, I guess.” It was a disposable answer and Charles was sick of talking around things with Erik, breathing life into old monsters by not saying their names. “I never really had any intention of returning to this house. Or this city. But after my mother died, someone needed to settle the estate. I thought—well, my siblings have always had a misguided affection for the house, I suppose because they never saw it full or empty, not like me, and I felt—feel—obligated to stay here for them. I would have boarded it up or turned it into something more useful otherwise. It's easier not to relive what happened in those rooms if I never go in them, make them ghosts like everything else.” 

“Siblings?” Erik's eyes had slipped shut, but Charles knew better than to think that he wasn't listening raptly. He had a way of broadcasting a false sense of security. 

“Adopted sister and step-brother, not, em, blood relatives.” It was nice way of covering up his own failings as a brother, to break it down to technicalities. Perhaps he never had a chance with Cain—they were both too old and too jagged around the edges from loss and their own circumstances to ever peacefully coexist—but he'd had a real chance with Raven, to be something more than himself, to be something _better_ than himself. 

“You're the only Xavier left.” 

“You're the only Lehnsherr left.” 

Erik didn't say anything, setting his jaw, his eyes snapping open for a second. 

“All of the Xaviers died here. I expect I will, too.” 

“I thought I'd be dead already.” It sounded innocent enough, but it felt like all the air had dropped out of the room. Charles translated the bravado out of it: _I want to be dead already._

“How did you get mixed up with Shaw and the Hellfire?” _Why aren't you?_

“My—father. My father was mixed up with Shaw. It all starts on the up and up with Shaw, doesn't it? Everything is above the table and there's no small print, no one is signing their life away, until you try to move on to bigger and better things. My dad was trying to move on to bigger and better things. He was an engineer, not brilliant, but brilliant enough that Shaw funded some things for him. And when my father tried to get funding elsewhere, Shaw made sure everyone knew what it meant when he—he owned something. My father had compromised something top secret within Shaw's wider operation and he—Shaw killed him. Well, not with his own hand, but his fingerprints were all over. I was home. I was the only one home. And—so. Shaw came back for my mother and I said—I told him I'd do whatever he wanted if. I traded my life for hers.” 

Charles didn't say anything. Erik let his eyes slip shut again, one his hands a light pressure on Charles's hip, his legs across Charles's lap. “It's not as bad as it sounds. It's—it's just how things are.” 

“That's worse than it sounds. We can get used to anything, it doesn't mean we should.” 

“What would you have done differently?” There's no malice in his voice, probably because there's enough of it in the question. 

“My dad died before he was even a real person to me. I don't know anything about him, at least nothing real. Everyone loved him, but they can never tell me why—they don't know anything real about him either. They know what he _did_ , they know what he was capable of, they know what he said, but they don't know anything about who he was, what he wanted out of life, what was important to him, anything other than the pedigree and the old money and the new science. And they don't know me either, but they see me as some kind of walking and talking ghost of a man I've never even met, hold me to a standard that they've invented in their heads because they've made a martyr out of a man they never even took the time to get to know. Before I was born, everything I have ever wanted has been paid for, and both of my parents thought that this was a substitute for genuine affection, for friends and family, and they filled the house with vapid people and objects with only monetary worth and people wonder why I don't like being an Xavier.” 

“It must have been terrible, living in such hardship.” His resentment breaks through, but it's still subdued, as though Charles is looking at it through glass. 

“I'm not trying to trivialize anything, I'm trying to say—I'm trying to say that I would have done everything differently because it never could have happened to me.” 

“If your siblings don't live here, why were they so concerned about keeping the house?” 

Charles wrapped a hand around Erik's ankle, his pajamas about an inch too short, huffing out a relieved sigh. He knew that Erik was avoiding making the conversation more weighty, but then again, Erik had never been a pusher—it wasn't that he was content to leave things as they were, but if he could avoid fighting against things he couldn't change, he would. “A fair question and one I don't have the answer to. Cain's father—my step-father—died here, too, so I suppose Cain may be trying to avoid those unpleasant memories. My mother and his father had quite a turbulent relationship as well, so. And Kurt, my step-father, he wasn't—he was violent. With my mother, with me, with Cain. And as for Raven, I don't think she ever thought of this place as home. Well, she thought of it as my home, but not her own. I think she was upset by the idea that I could willfully turn my back on who I'd been. I think she was afraid I wouldn't like the person I would become without this house.” _Without her_ went unspoken. 

“You're going to leave, aren't you?” 

“Yes. Probably not forever. I've tried that before, too.” Oxford. Amsterdam. Men and darkly lit bars in too bright cities and too much alcohol and not enough sleep. 

“If I asked you to stay, you would.” 

“If you asked me to stay, I would.” 

Erik fell asleep, hand still on Charles's hip, legs still across Charles's lap. 

– 

The fall turned into winter, and the winter meant the end of the semester. Erik didn't spend Christmas with his mother and Charles didn't spend Christmas with Raven. 

It got harder to keep lying to himself. He did love Erik, in this quiet, festering way that had grown from the top down, digging its way all the way to Charles's roots. It had torn them up without him noticing and replanted them somewhere he knew he would never be able to grow. 

Charles told him, whispering against his hair, rocking into him slowly, slowly, slowly, the way Erik hated, holding on to him so tightly he couldn't move, a sharp, hissing sound of protest the only sound he was making, that he had never loved anybody, not his mother, not his father, not his sister, not his brother, not any of the girls he'd kissed or boys he'd fucked or even people he'd met on the street, he'd never loved anybody. 

Erik wiggled, bucked up against him, and told Charles it didn't matter. 

Charles had always intended to ask him what he meant, but he never got around to it. 

– 

It wasn't jealousy—Charles wasn't possessive because he knew the true value of possessions—and it wasn't his hero complex, though admittedly, a small part of him had always hoped he'd end up the hero of the piece, but he didn't want Erik going back to the Hellfire. Shaw hadn't drawn battle lines, not exactly, but Charles felt like there was something deeper than Erik's bargain, some darker tether to that life, like Erik was looking for something he thought he wouldn't be able to find anywhere else. 

Charles had done that, too. He had done that his whole life, burying his nose in books, dissecting things to the cellular level, losing himself in drugs and people and the slow passage of time, and he wasn't romantic enough to believe that Erik was his soulmate, but he was romantic enough to believe that he could stop looking elsewhere. Charles read Erik's steady return to the Hellfire as an admission that Erik was still looking for something better, and it stung more than he'd like. 

It was undoubtedly an insecurity thing. He couldn't help imagining other men touching Erik, the same way Charles touched him. They paid him for it, of course, they paid to touch him and hear him and whisper obscenities into his hair, but Shaw's sickly sweet voice had taken root in the back of Charles's head, insidious and loud, and maybe Charles was paying him, paying him with time, with the mansion, with a genuine and dangerous affection that Erik hadn't asked for, with all of the things old money meant when you didn't have it. 

He could have told Erik about it, but he was too proud or too ashamed or too afraid of what Erik might say back to him. So instead, when Erik came home late, having showered somewhere else, his hair still damp, a small smile on his face, Charles turned his face away when Erik leaned forward to kiss him and said, “Do it for me like you do it for them.” 

“I—what. What do you mean?” Erik rubbed a hand up the back of his head, making all of his hair stand up. 

“I want to know what it's like.” Charles hooked his fingers in Erik's belt loops and tugged him forward, almost knocking them both off balance. “To pay for you,” he hissed against the shell of Erik's ear. Erik shoved at his shoulders, but Charles grabbed his waist, forced him even closer. “Come on, Erik.” 

Erik dropped to his knees, rubbing his face against the inseam of Charles's pants, breathing heavy around him before tonguing at the zipper of his pants, casting his eyes up. Charles's stomach dropped and it took all of his willpower not to fasten his hands to the back of Erik's head, to push him forward, buck against him. Erik drew his zipper down slowly and huffed on his hands before pulling Charles out, fingers warm and slow, stroking very deliberately, before he wrapped his mouth around Charles, swallowing around him in one smooth motion, nose colliding with the buckle of Charles's belt. Charles groaned, his knees threatening to give, so he grabbed at Erik's shoulder, squeezed, his eyes slipping shut until Erik pulled back, spit hanging off of his bottom lip. He slid up Charles's body slowly and kissed him, wet and hard and fast, opening Charles up with his tongue. 

“Fuck me right here,” Erik said, drawing back, wiping Charles off of his mouth. “Right on the floor.” Erik undid Charles's belt buckle and tugged Charles pants down before stripping off his own shirt and stepping out of his jeans. He got on all fours and looked at Charles over his shoulder, biting his lip, a dangerous glint in his eyes and even though he was smiling, it never quite reached his eyes. Charles made for the bedroom, but Erik shook his head gravely. “Lick me. That's all I need.” 

Charles's could barely breathe, his hands shaking as he ran them from Erik's neck down to his waist. Erik spread his legs wider and groaned impatiently, but Charles was going to take his time, pretend he didn't know that another man had already touched him that night, leave his fingerprints on every part of Erik he could touch, burn himself under Erik's skin. He kissed every dip in Erik's spine, stopping right before the curve of his ass, sucking right on that spot, making Erik jerk his hips back against Charles's mouth. Charles held him by his hips and dipped his mouth done slowly, sucking more than licking. Erik spread his legs apart even wider, leaning forward and putting all of his weight on his elbows, angling his body for better access. Charles dipped his tongue in and the sound Erik made caused something to uncoil in his stomach, his heart sinking further down in his chest—he couldn't be sure if was real or fake or if it mattered to him, but he opened Erik up with his tongue, Erik pushing back against him hard enough to make his whole nose hurt. 

It almost felt perfunctory when Charles was finally inside him, all of the intimacy gone. Erik was loud, louder than he ever was, moaning and encouraging Charles in the traditional sense _so good oh god so good don't stop please oh like that fuck it's so good fuck me fuck me fuck me_. Charles bit him on the shoulder, trying to shock him out of it, but Erik gasped and threw his head back, forcing Charles deeper inside him, sliding his knees back further so he could push back against Charles, his back curved as he pressed his forehead against the carpet. Charles came. Erik didn't. Charles reached for him, but Erik shrugged him off. He stood up, leaving Charles collapsed, lying flat on his back on the floor, and he got dressed, stretching to crack his back. He had carpet burns on his knees. Charles watched him, tired, a little angry, but he didn't say anything until Erik walked toward the door. He scrambled up, nearly crawling after him. 

“What the fuck? Where are you going?” 

Erik's mouth was a thin line, his eyes steeled over and distant, jaw set and ticking. “You said you wanted to know what it was like to pay for me. This is what's it like. I don't stick around.” 

“Erik, I didn't want—I didn't mean it like that. I'm just... I wanted to know.” 

“Wanted to know _what_?” Erik drew closer to him, his voice dropping an octave. It was a trick, Charles knew that, but it still made his stomach flip obnoxiously, his mouth dry, the air rushing out of the room. “Wanted to know if I _liked_ it when they fucked me? Wanted to know if I was their little _slut_? You think you're nothing like them, don't you? You think you're so much _nobler_. You're not taking advantage of me, you're only giving me what I _asked_ for. Don't you think I ask for them to? _Beg_ for them? All my life I've had men like you try to give me what they thought I needed. Don't you think I could figure that out myself?” 

Charles swallowed reflexively, taken aback, but he could feel a whole relationship's worth of resentment rising up his throat, the same resentment he'd felt when Erik had walked into his office more than three months ago. He dressed himself brusquely, stepping into his pants, feeling Erik's eyes like heat on his back. “You know what? _Fuck_ you. What _do_ you need, Erik? A good, hardy fuck to rattle your teeth now and again? I've given you plenty of those, exactly like you asked for, and I never asked for a single fucking thing in return. Do you know how risky this is? There is more than just what's at stake for you—I know that's hard to understand when you're seventeen fucking years old, but the things you do affect other people. I'm not—I'm not someone you can just fuck and leave, okay? Not anymore. You know how many people know about us? Because you're so fucking unsubtle, because you fucked wormed your way into my life when I wasn't looking, because you're fucking persistent and you know how to use people and—” Charles stopped. Erik's mouth was open, but his eyes were dead, blank, devoid of all information. Charles reached for him, but Erik took a step back, so Charles let his hands drop, balling them into fists at his sides. “I love you, you know.” It sounded ridiculous, but Charles said it, anyway. 

“Why?” 

“Because you think I shouldn't. Because you think no one ever should. You're not alone, Erik. Or at least you don't have to be.” 

Erik left. Charles let him. 

– 

Erik stayed after class, hovering near Charles's desk. Charles ducked out of the classroom to make sure no one was lingering with in earshot. His classroom door didn't have a lock. Erik was wearing the same outfit he had worn the first day of school, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, shoulders drawn up. His eyes were wide, caught somewhere between apologetic and unrelenting, as if he was afraid even approaching Charles was admitting defeat. 

“You're going to make me choose.” Erik tilted his chin up, his jaw set, but his eyes were swimming and Charles felt like he was drowning. He steadied himself against his desk, hands flat and spread, head ducked down. 

“I tried very hard not to force your hand. I'm sure you don't believe me.” He chanced a glance up at Erik. Erik didn't believe him. “It's—fine. It's fine. I'd hardly expect you to wager all simply because I have. We can't all make the same mistake.” 

“I didn't want you to. I didn't ask for this.” He was calm, though his fists had balled up at his sides. He curled and uncurled them a few times, but Charles knew better than to think that it had anything to do with his resolve. 

“I know. I'm sorry. But—but I can't, Erik, I can't. I would give up everything, all of it, and you—won't.” Charles paused, waiting for Erik to say something, anything. He finally looked up, met Erik's eyes properly, and he wished he hadn't, the pain and anger he saw reflected back at him enough to make him feel like doubling over again. “It doesn't have to be this way. Please, Erik.” 

Erik hiked his backpack up higher on his shoulders and left. Charles had enough self-respect not to watch his back. 

–

Erik Lehnsherr took over the Hellfire before he turned twenty, becoming one of the richest men in the country without having finished high school or his biology coursework. Erik Lehnsherr was nothing like Sebastian Shaw unless you squinted at the fine print. Erik Lehnsherr smiled convincingly at flash bulbs and said all of the right things to the media, always very good at telling people the sort of things he thought they might like to hear, but if you looked hard enough, you could see a forced determination that hadn't been there before, a steel cover over a lack of conviction,. Someone had planted a seed of doubt that even Erik Lehnsherr couldn't shake no matter how much money he made and how many cars he bought and how many hotel rooms he spent sleeping in alone. Erik Lehnsherr did not keep tabs on Charles Xavier. Erik Lehnsherr had always known what he wanted to become, what he was capable of, and Charles Xavier had been a distraction—a necessary one because he gave Erik the push he needed, but he had been nothing more. 

Erik Lehnsherr had always been a very good liar.


End file.
